


If you go (You'll never come back)

by omiceti



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2011-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omiceti/pseuds/omiceti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every weekend he asks, Deliver us from evil. God never seems to be listening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you go (You'll never come back)

He meets Benson on a Thursday morning, when he’s late to work because Dickie drank too much milk and threw up on his tie. She’s nervous and obscenely beautiful, maybe too pretty for this job, and she’s wearing a terrible suit, and he’s surprised he’s noticing that.

It’s one of the most important days of his life, but he doesn’t know yet.

*

She works all right from the beginning, a thorough investigator, willing to get her hands dirty. By the book, but not too much. He likes her style. He doesn’t really trust her, but he knows that takes time. This isn’t his first trip around the block.

*

Your new partner, Kathy says. Benson. She’s very pretty.

I guess she is, he says. Slips an arm around his wife. Not like you, though.

She laughs, then, says, Good answer, El.

But you can talk to her, she says after another minute, about work. He says, Yeah, of course, she’s my partner, of course we talk.

You could talk to me about it sometime, Kathy says, but she already sounds resigned.

No way, he says, again, because this isn’t the first time they’ve had this discussion. I don’t want that world coming anywhere near you. It comes home, it’s all over.

She nods. He knows she doesn’t really understand. That’s okay with him. He doesn’t want her to understand the kind of ugliness you can’t ever scrub out of your skin.

*

She’s good with victims, one of the best he’s ever seen. Eventually he mentions it to her, on their way back from an interview at St. Vincent’s. She tilts her head at him, finishing one of those cream-filled donuts she only lets herself eat once a week, and tells him why.

He’s good at his poker face. Finally he says, Well, that’s some pretty heavy stuff.

She shrugs. I haven’t said anything because I, I didn’t want you to have a reason not to trust my instincts, you know?

I do trust you, he says, realizes it’s true.

Good to know, she says, and she smiles at him like she feels lighter.

*

The first time she saves his life is also the first time she kills someone. It’s a hostage situation but they can’t wait for SWAT, so they go down, down to the basement laundry room, and he can feel her breathing behind him, the thrum of the washers vibrating in the floor, his adrenaline flooding strength into his veins. That’s a feeling you have to fight, every time, he knows that, or it’ll get you killed, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour.

He never finishes that particular prayer.

The perp’s wild-eyed with his finger on the trigger and his boot on his own wife’s throat. He twitches, raises the gun toward Elliot, and Benson drops him almost before he’s noticed, two shots, copper spattering on cinder block. He kicks the perp’s gun away, kneels to check his absent pulse, the smell of detergent heavy and sour in his nose. Same brand Kathy uses, because it smells like their pillowcases on Monday nights.

He looks up at Benson, still poised to shoot, strands of dark hair blown over her face, eyes wide, lips parted, breathing heavily, and watches her swallow. He knows that look, the look of someone just realizing she’s going to have to get used to this.

He knows every morning he goes to work that it might be the day he doesn’t come home.

Good shot, he tells her later, after she’s finished her debrief with IAB, and she wipes her mouth, says, Thanks. Doesn’t smile.

*

He realizes it’s going to work out with them on a February morning, on stakeout, when he offers to make a coffee run to the deli, and Olivia yawns and smiles and says, Yeah, please, I’m beat. He jogs down, asks for one black, one with a little cream.

Back to the unmarked. Thanks, she says, then, You know how I take it, huh. He hasn’t realized that he does, but, Yeah, he says, Of course.

*

In the middle of the night they’re trying to catch a guy who takes little girls and rapes them before he chokes them to death, they’ve already been at it for hours and hours, and he wakes her up in the crib after fifteen minutes of rest because the guys from Central have finally trucked over the boxes and boxes of files they need. Oh no, she groans, but she’s already swinging her legs out of the bunk, and he can see the planes of her stomach where her sweater rides up, tries not to notice.

The dead girls have stomachs full of cupcakes and candy, he knows that from the ME’s reports.

It’s the twins’ eighth birthday by the time they get the perp, and the girl he took is still alive, so at least that, at least it meant something this time, and he’s had no time to buy the twins’ presents, he’s barely had time to think. On the way home he stops at King Kullen, can’t even think about cake, buys some crap for ice cream sundaes instead. He forgets the chocolate chips, but he remembers the candles, so no one says anything. Kathy sticks them in the ice cream and everything melts everywhere, but it’s sort of fun, actually.

Cabot negotiates the name and gravesite of the last, unidentified girl in return for not putting a needle in the freak’s arm (he’d beat the perv to a grease stain with his bare hands if he thought he could get away with it, he knows he would), so he and Olivia stand in the snow while the ME’s guys dig up the girl’s worm-eaten body, her little red shoes, and then they avoid each other’s eyes and they go do the notification, which is almost the worst part of the job, except for all the others.

Every weekend he asks, deliver us from evil.

God never seems to be listening.

*

One time she’s Donna and he’s Greg, and they’re trying to take down a ring of traffickers who kill babies with cocaine, and they sit at a bar for rich assholes and pretend to flirt with each other. It’s just pretend, obviously, and they’re both wired, of course. But he sees the way men look at Olivia, sees the way their eyes run over her, and he’s obscurely proud that they see them together. Even though, well, of course they’re together.

Later he says, That was a nice dress, and he smirks at her, because they can tease.

She grins. Maybe blushes a little. Yeah, not bad, she says. It was one-third of my dress collection. Gave it back to the department already.

He laughs. She says, I should probably learn to walk in heels before the next one we have to do.

Should ask Cabot to teach you, he tells her, she’s always wearing them.

She lifts an eyebrow, smiles a little, says, Maybe I already have.

*

From the waiting room he calls Kathy, says, Alex Cabot’s been shot.

He hears her gasp. Is she going to be okay? she asks, and he says, I don’t know, Kath, it looked, it didn’t look good. I’m just, I'm going to have to stay here, okay?

Is Olivia all right? she asks, and he doesn’t really think to wonder why.

Uh, not really, he says, then, I should go. I love you.

In the corner of his eye he sees Olivia flinch.

Oh, he thinks. Oh, fuck. He hangs up and he looks at her trembling hands with Cabot’s blood still all over them, and he can’t think of a single thing to say.

*

How you holding up, he asks, a week after it happens, when they’re at Sullivan’s and she’s staring down at the bar, trying not to cry into her scotch. She never drinks scotch.

She looks up at him. Her eyes are miserable and there are dark circles under them. I don’t want to talk about it, she says.

She’s got that thousand-yard thing. Seen it a million times. He thinks about suggesting she talk to Huang. He thinks about what he would do, if Kathy disappeared and she told him to get shrinked.

He covers her hand with his, keeps his mouth shut.

*

Cabot’s gone again and it was the only thing in his goddamned life that was working right for a tiny, shining change, just one thing, that she was back, and now she’s gone again. He stares at Olivia over the top of his desk, the wounded set of her mouth and the way she doesn’t look at him anymore. He hopes Alex will be okay. He knows how easy it is to get someone killed in the Program. Only takes one moron to say the wrong thing to the wrong guy, and everyone ends up with bullets in their heads. Seen it himself.

Olivia had a beautiful smile, he remembers.

He misses his wife.

*

He doesn’t really know what he’s confessing to, anymore. Anger, maybe. Everything is foggy with anger and it is one of the seven deadly sins, so. He can’t remember whether you’re supposed to confess those, these days. Father O’Malley tells him his penance is to call his wife. He doesn’t want to think about Kathy as penance, as punishment.

He goes straight from the confessional to a scene and she’s not there, and a guy says he’s his new partner, and Elliot wants to punch him in the face. When he gets to the house Cragen tells him they needed a break from each other.

He tries to breathe. It hurts.

Well. They got a kid killed because they couldn’t deal with each other, so he gets it, yeah. Except that Cragen’s treating him like he’s a lunatic, all of a sudden, like Olivia is some kind of fucking saint, Detective Olivia Benson, Patron Saint of Very Special Victims, when she’s even more lost than he is. It’s just that he’s the only one who knows why she would be, so they don’t think to look at her.

He won’t betray her even after she leaves him, so he doesn’t say anything, of course.

I’m sorry, Olivia tells him, after he almost puts the new guy through a wall. I should have told you, she says. It’s just, it’s just too complicated.

She can’t meet his eyes. He doesn’t know what she means anymore. All he knows is that he keeps losing, losing, and now she’s gone too and it’s like an amputation. He’s heard of phantom pain, how the missing limb keeps hurting even after it’s gone. And yeah, it’s just a crap analogy, or metaphor, or whatever (Olivia would know what it’s fucking called), but he looks at her empty desk and he can feel its truth.

He doesn’t call Kathy.

*

Eventually Kathy calls him, and he asks how she’s been, and she says, Fine, El, I’ve been fine, I guess, you?

Fine, he says, like he’s going to say anything else. It’s silent for a while. Then he says, Maybe we could have dinner sometime?

How’s tomorrow? she asks. Seven?

It’s sort of awkward but they have a lot of years together and a lot of kids to talk about, so it could go much worse. She smiles at him, and she looks good. He hopes he does, too. They walk to the parking lot together and she gets in his car, doesn’t say anything, lets him drive her back and kiss her and put her between his sheets. Sliding into Kathy again feels like coming home.

When she tells him she’s pregnant, he doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.

Everything goes okay with her, with Eli, thanks to Olivia, thanks be to God.

*

Cabot shows up at a scene years later, just waltzes over, and okay, he knew she was back in New York, because Casey had told him, but he looks at Olivia’s face and he hears the way she says, Alex, and she’s not all that good at hiding her pain anymore.

He’s at Hogan Place to go over his testimony because they’re hoping for a hate crimes enhancement, and he can’t resist, he finds her office. Got a minute? he asks, sticking his head into the crack of her door, and she swivels around behind her desk so she’s facing him, smiles, says, Sure, please, sit, Elliot. It’s good to see you.

No thanks, I won’t be here long, he says, and he can feel the anger tight in his chest. I just wanted to tell you, Counselor, you should have called her back.

He sees the flicker of pain there before she closes her face down. It’s enough.

*

After a long while, he catches her humming a Patsy Cline song in the crib. Her mom liked Patsy Cline, he remembers.

You and Alex again, huh, he asks.

She turns to him, falters. That a problem for you?

No, no, of course, he says. Of course not. Just, are you happy, Liv?

She licks her lip, actually smiles a little. Yeah, she says. You know, I guess I am.

He smiles back.

*

The phone rings in the early morning, when everything smells like sleep. Kathy groans and picks up, saying, It’s your office wife, and there’s no bitterness in her tone. On the other end of the line, he can hear Olivia’s chuckle.

He knows he should be worried or something, because some punk wants his shield, but Kathy nestles her head into his neck, where her hair tickles him, and he heard Olivia laugh with her, and it’s the happiest he’s been in a long, long time.

He knows better, by now, than to hope it will last.


End file.
